


Let the Right One In

by andreaphobia



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Cold, M/M, Paranoia, Survival, Vampire Hunter, Vampires, Winter, learning about monsters, learning about oneself, living alone, lots of loneliness, of a sort, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 06:13:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: A story about living alone in the woods while being stalked by a bloodthirsty monster. Or: the one where Hibari's a vampire, and Yamamoto's a vampire hunter.





	Let the Right One In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [autumnalesque](https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnalesque/gifts).



> I originally started this in 2011, and it's remained dormant for many years... until now. For some reason I felt the urge to finish it, so here it is.
> 
> It was quite interesting reviving this to work on it in the middle of a record heat-wave, considering that one of my primary goals when I first wrote it was to convey a sense of cold. I hope that still comes across, somehow.
> 
> Title is ripped off from the book with similar themes. Lyrics are from Vienna Teng's _Drought_ (a song which shows up in a great many fics, I'm sure).

 

 

 

_let winterlight come_ _  
_ _and spread your white sheets over my empty house_

*

He’s nearly out of time.

It’s just a game, he tells himself as he runs, stumbling haphazardly through the snow, between the trees. _Just a game_. Like the ones he used to play with his father. Hide-and-go-seek. Hunters and stalkers.

They’re just playing a game.

Except this is a game he can never win—he can only postpone losing. Not indefinitely, either, for his opponents in this game are patient, ever watchful. They can wait a long time.

Forever, if need be. And he won’t last forever. One of these days he’ll screw up—and when he does, they’ll be waiting.

Like today, for instance.

In the distance, the sun burns ochre as it sets over the trees. Light sweeps across the land swiftly, far too swiftly, disappearing over the horizon. Yamamoto breathes hard, runs harder, and tells himself it’s a game to keep the panic at bay. He can’t tell if it’s just his imagination or maybe he’s losing his grip, but as darkness falls around him, he begins to hear... _things_. A strange, otherworldly fluttering, like dozens of tiny wings, or perhaps the tortuous sound of claws on steel.

The sight of the home he once shared with his father fills him with a relief like he has never felt in all his nineteen years. He vaults the gate and sprints the length of the yard, wrenching the door open to slam it behind him. He half expects to hear the thump of bodies colliding with it on the other side, but they would never do anything so graceless. Instead, a sudden gale picks up, beating against the door as though in frustration, and then—silence.

Yamamoto leans back against the door, fingers curling in against solid wood, and breathes slow and deep until his heart rate returns to normal.

Though he knows full well they only provide the illusion of safety, he goes through the motions of locking the door anyway, checking each bolt conscientiously after the fact. The inside of the cottage is cold and dark; he lights a fire and stokes it to get it blazing, then settles down by the hearth. He’s shaking all over—from the cold or from terror, it’s anyone’s guess.

Out in the blustering snowstorm, a shadowy figure stalks in angry circles just outside the boundaries of the cottage, like a wolf circling its prey. In the darkness, its eyes glow red like coals.

*

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi died in winter, and when spring finally came, coaxing countless tiny green shoots from the frozen soil, Yamamoto made the long trek down to the village alone.

While the mayor looked on, the village record-keeper had accepted his father’s last letter with an appropriately solemn look. Each word he spoke was unsurprised at mortality. “How did he die? Was it an illness? The cold?”

Yamamoto had only shrugged. It was not a question he felt inclined to answer. If he happened to be feeling perverse, he might have answered ‘everything’. But he was not feel that way—under the circumstances, he did not much feel much of anything.

No one asked him where the body had been laid to rest. At any rate, it was not a thing that was generally discussed in polite company. He had buried his father simply, according to the rules and traditions of generations past, on a clear and cloudless day. The kind of day his father had loved—good weather was a portent of good things,  he’d always said.

He had waited for the wind to die down, and then spoke the old words, one hand clasped over his heart, the way he’d been taught. And every Sunday morning after he continued to pay his respects, bowing his head in silent prayer by the simple stone marker, at the head of the shallow grave he had dug with his own hands.

Perhaps it was worth noting that thus far, the grave had not been spoiled. There was part of him that wanted to believe that it was because the old words held power, still; that they had conferred some sort of protection to his father’s final resting place.

The other part of him knew that it was because the night walkers had no interest in still blood; only the blood of the living would satisfy their hunger. In that sense, it did not matter how many of their kind Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had disposed of. They were no more likely to despoil his grave because of it.

In the present, the record-keeper was watching him uncertainly. “Of course you’ll be wanting to settle down here, now that your father’s passed away,” he began, tentatively, as though testing the waters for this idea. “I’m sure we can find a family to take you in, in the interim—”

“No,” said Yamamoto. It was the first word he had spoken since delivering his father’s final missive. His frankness seemed to take the man by surprise,  and for a moment it seemed as though he wished to argue the point, only desisting at a warning touch on the arm from the mayor.

“As you wish.” The old man was watching Yamamoto keenly. It wasn't clear from his expression whether he approved of the decision, but certainly he seemed willing to accept it.

And if he had felt inclined to explain, he might have told them, quite believably, that it was because he wanted to finish the job that Yamamoto Tsuyoshi had started. That it was his calling, his _destiny_ , and he was merely answering it.

In truth, however, it was simply because he had nowhere else to go. For reasons he struggled to articulate, it was easier to accept that he would one day meet a fate like his father’s; easier to just continue the way of life he was long accustomed to. Even knowing full well that he was making a mistake, for old wisdom held that hunters should always work in pairs for safety, he saw no reason to adjust his course. (The day that he'd discovered Tsuyoshi's body, bent and broken in the snow, was the same day that he realized that nothing was safe, nothing was sacred; everything perished in time.)

Afterwards, when there was no more left to be said, he took his leave of them; returned to the little cottage on the mountain, worked, ate, and slept.

When he woke in the morning, Tsuyoshi was still gone. And for the first time since his father had passed, he allowed himself to cry.

*

Nearly a year has gone by since Tsuyoshi’s passing—the seasons coming and going, melting the ice and adorning the trees with leaves, only to strike them bare again, and before long, he notices the morning dew on the window panes has chilled into veins of frost. But it is not yet the bitterest part of the long winter, and so there is still game to be had out in the forest, amongst the brittle pines. (After his brush with danger just the week before, Yamamoto has become more cautious, more wary of the passage of time; he won’t be risking his neck with the nightstalkers again in a hurry.)

The result of today’s hunt is an elk and her calf—which he decides to put out of its misery, as it won’t last long in the wilderness without its mother. A bountiful catch, too; he’ll eat well for at least a week, with plenty left over for jerky. However, the calf’s meat is stringy, too lean for a good meal, so on a whim he leaves its corpse out in the yard, helpfully laid on its side to expose the flesh of its belly.

Later that night, he thinks he hears noises out in the yard—wolves, perhaps?—but a glance out the window reveals something quite different. A movement at the corner of his eye catches his attention; a familiar silhouette settling, wraith-like, upon a fencepost, to remain perched there like an overgrown vulture.

Its eyes shine like two pits of fire amongst the shadows of its face. It does not move.

Yamamoto holds its gaze steadily, until nearly a minute has passed. Then he turns away, slightly shaken, and resolves to put it out of his mind.

That night he sleeps, and in his sleep he sees a strangely familiar dream. Blue eyes looking down at him, crystal clear, like the surface of a lake on a calm day. Dark hair which flows silkily through his fingers; the vague scent of lilacs. A small, pointed smile playing around the edges of a pair of very pale lips.

Yamamoto smiles back, fingertips tracing the notches of his partner’s spine underneath his shirt. But as he watches, those lips slowly part, revealing the tips of too-pointed incisors—

He wakes with a start, shuddering at the sensation of thousands of needles, of tiny pointed teeth prickling all over his skin. It’s still the dead of night, and outside the window, snow continues to fall. Dark shapes swarm over the corpse of the calf, but one remains motionless by the gate, fingers of frost staining its lips and clumps of its hair blue.

*

When Yamamoto ventures outside the next morning, the calf is gone. _Probably the wolves_ , he supposes. He very carefully does not think about the other creature, the one that was watching him, waiting for him out by the gate. Nothing good could possibly come of dwelling on that for too long.

Down in the cellar where it’s cool, strips of elk are laid out on racks to dry. He won’t be needing to hunt for a while; at least, not until his food stores are running low. Instead, while daylight still shines, he splits some logs for firewood out back of the cottage, relishing in the solid weight of the axe handle against his palm; in the uncomplicated joy of physical labor.

As he works, he becomes faintly aware of a certain prickling sensation at the base of his spine, as though he’s being watched. But he has nothing to fear while the sun is still up. He persists until his hands are stiff from the cold; until it almost hurts to pry his bloodless fingers out of their frozen grip, and massage feeling back into them.

Back inside the cottage, he stokes the fire to get it going, and heats the kettle over the stove. Just as flames burst into life in the hearth, the sun sets over the distant mountains, plunging the forest into darkness.

Yamamoto keeps his back turned to the windows, and yet that strange feeling of being watched never goes away. Still, he ignores it; washes down his supper of boiled potatoes, cabbage, and venison with a mug of hot tea, then lies down with the covers pulled up over his head, the way a child hides from the monsters that go bump in the night.

He sleeps, but does not dream. And when morning comes, with the pale light of dawn spilling throughout the room, Yamamoto wakes up lost and alone.

*

Along with the deep-seated awareness that someone, or some _thing_ , is watching him, the terrible feeling of being adrift in a desolate sea is something he swiftly becomes accustomed to. Each passing day makes the path that the sun traces across the sky just that little bit shorter, and Yamamoto has no choice but to simply go on, down the lonely path he has chosen; the path of his father, and _his_ father before him. Winter is coming, and there’s no place for him in the village or elsewhere—the only home he has is here, this little cottage on the mountainside, not so far from a little sun-dappled clearing where a bare headstone marks the final resting place of his father’s bones.

As the days wear on and big game grows scarce, he begins to set snares the way his father taught him: thin loops of twine which lead back to saplings, bent under tension like coiled springs. It takes several false starts, but eventually he manages to catch a few rabbits.

At first, he struggles to do the deed, with their warm little bodies trapped under his palm, tiny hearts pounding desperately, betraying their will to live. In the end, though, his will is stronger, and the rabbits, properly prepared, make for a good stew.

But with no one with which to make conversation or share his meals, the nights are long and lonely, with nothing to distract him from the prickling of eyes on the back of his neck. For a time he even tries talking to himself, just to give him something to listen to. But his voice echoes far too loudly in the empty house, once so full of love and laughter, that he can hardly bear it, and so he stops.

Then all that’s left is the hiss and crackle of the fire in the hearth; the wind howling through the trees and rattling the loose tiles on the roof, and always, _always_ , the feeling of being watched. He’s heard stories of people losing it, spending too much time alone out in the wilderness, but he’s not even sure that that’s what this is. He’s becoming certain that it’s not loneliness that will drive him mad, but the paranoia. Shadows dancing across the windows, strange dreams night after night, and those _eyes_ , watching him in the dark...

And then, one night, he snaps. Outside the snow is coming down hard and heavy, but he doesn’t care a jot—he flings the front door open and lets the cold air rush in, nearly blinding him with the force of it. There might be something moving out there in the darkness, or there might not; these days he can never be quite sure. But one thing he _is_ sure of is that someone’s been watching him, and he’s had quite enough of it.

He throws an arm up across his eyes to shield them from the cutting gale, and yells into the heart of the storm, “HEY!”

The wind itself seems to pick up the word, sweeping it away to hurl it forcefully over the quivering pines. It encourages him to hear the way his voice echoes through the trees, larger than life, and so he continues. “What do you _want_ from me? Just go away!”

Once the echoes die down, however, silence returns, and there is, of course, no reply. And as the adrenaline fades, Yamamoto gradually begins to feel as though he is being ridiculous. What did he expect to achieve, exactly, by screaming into the night?

He waits a moment or two more (though god only knows what he’s waiting for), and then shuts the door resolutely, turns around, and goes back to bed. In the morning, the only evidence of his nighttime antics is a puddle by the door—a greyish pool of melted snow which had blown in while he was busy yelling at nothing and no one in particular.

Slightly ashamed, he soaks up the puddle with a rag, and resolves not to spend any more of his time or energy on any perceived slights—from creatures of the night, or otherwise.

*

But if he had thought that that little outburst would solve all his problems, he was sorely mistaken. The days drag on as they always have, except this time, there’s no creeping, otherworldly presence to break up the monotony.

It’s not as if he _misses_ the feeling of those eyes on the back of his head, or the sensation that he was being cornered in his own home, but... how should he put it? Knowing that there was something else out there—even if that something else would like nothing more than to have him for dinner—in a bizarre way, it was almost comforting. But now, Yamamoto Takeshi finds himself truly and utterly alone.

He falls back into the habit of talking to himself, this time narrating all the minutiae of his daily life to an invisible, omnipresent observer. It serves no purpose except to let him hear the sound of his own voice; to hear words at all, so that he does not forget how to speak. Sometimes he thinks that anything would be better than this: the crushing loneliness of the dead of winter, the frustration of doing nothing significant except waiting for time to pass and for the seasons to turn over. The days are short, the periods of sunlight shorter, and many a day he does not even venture outside, if he does not feel the need to replenish his food stores. He is isolated, and isolation becomes him; makes him its own.

From time to time, he hears the baying of wolves at night, somewhere out in the wild woods, and  occasionally he even feels the mad impulse to join them. Standing by the window and watching the trees sway violently back and forth in the wind, he tries to imagine what it would be like to hunt, to run with them—to be truly free, unfettered by human notions of duty or obligation. These fantasies are short-lived, but utterly compelling, and though he well knows the dangers of losing his sense of self, he cannot help how his heart longs for them.

As if the circumstances aren’t trying enough for his mental state, which grows more fragile by the day, the weather, too, seems to have ideas of its own. Dark clouds roll in from beyond the mountains, bringing with them nights of high winds and heavy snowfall. Soon, it becomes very clear that he won’t be venturing out much at all, even if he wants to—the long winter has begun.

On one of these nights, the storm is raging harder than ever. The fire gutters in the hearth as he watches it, brooding, with chin tucked into his palm. He has barely seen sunlight in a week. The winds howl as they sweep back and forth across the roof, making the cottage groan ominously in its foundation.

Then, the sound of glass breaking startles him to his feet. His first wild thought is that someone is breaking into the house, but further investigation reveals it is merely a stray tree branch, carried by the wind, which has shattered the kitchen window. That’s a mess that has to be swept up, but first, the window must be repaired, and he has a brief but violent internal debate with himself about the wisdom of venturing outside the cottage at night. He can’t imagine the wolves being out in this weather, but it’s not the wolves that he’s afraid of.

On the other hand, the chill air leaking into the kitchen through the broken window is already turning his breath to mist, and the last thing he wants is to wake up and find raccoons chewing on his underthings.

So, wearily, he retrieves his jacket from the hook beside the door, and laces up his boots. With the hood pulled up over his head, bent into the storm, he retrieves tools and planks from the work shed, and then makes his way around the house to where the blackened branch protrudes from the remains of the windows. He’s handy enough with hammer and nail, and has soon boarded up the gap as a temporary measure against the wind. Perfect it is not, but it will tide him over until the storm eases.

The task done at last, he picks up his toolbox, teeth chattering uncontrollably, turns to go back into the house—

—and bumps into a very solid, but not particularly warm, body.

Aghast, Yamamoto staggers back into the side of the cottage with an undignified yelp, falling as he reaches blindly for a tool or anything he could use as a weapon—but rather than attacking, the nightstalker simply looks down at him with an expression of mild curiosity, and Yamamoto finds himself transfixed by its gaze.

This allows him to get a good look at it. The nightstalker is pale with high cheekbones, an elegantly sculpted nose, and dark hair which falls to just below his eyes, which are blood red and frighteningly luminescent. With a start, Yamamoto realizes that he _knows_ this face—it’s one that he’s seen many a night, in his dreams.

“Hello,” the nightstalker says. His voice is scratchy; low and rough, as though from long disuse. “Did you miss me?”

Without thinking, Yamamoto says a word that, in a past life, would have earned him quite the disapproving look from his father. Even knowing that it makes no difference, he still feels the urge to cross himself, and does so—starting on the wrong side at first, then backing up and trying again, with his eyes fixed on the nightstalker’s face all the while, as though expecting him to rear away in agony.

All he receives is a half-bored, half-amused look—like he’s committed some sort of minor social faux pas, but the nightstalker is too polite by half to mention it.

“Are you quite done?” it says, eventually, as Yamamoto lowers his arm, aborting the ineffectual attempt to ward the nightstalker off.

“Uh... yeah.”

Deciding that the nightstalker would have already killed him if it had a mind to, Yamamoto takes the time to dust himself off before clumsily getting to his feet. In all this time, the nightstalker does not move a muscle—it merely watches Yamamoto, still in a disconcertingly reptilian way.

Keenly aware of the nightstalker’s eyes boring into the back of his neck, Yamamoto picks up the toolbox once more, and does not breathe until he has made it back into the cottage, whereupon he sets the toolbox down beside the door, next to his spare boots.

When he turns around, he notices the nightstalker has moved—frighteningly fast, and without a sound, such that it has its toes to the threshold of the entrance to the cottage. At the sight of this, before he remembers he has nothing to worry about he finds himself taking a small, instinctive step backwards, putting more distance between them.

From the doorway it continues to watch him, silent and expressionless. And faced with a sentient creature, one that can serve as the other party in the first real conversation he’s had in months, Yamamoto feels almost compelled to speak.

“You gave me such a fright, I nearly swallowed my tongue.”

It’s more of a complaint than a conversation starter, but nevertheless the nightstalker replies.

“I know.”

It even sounds quite pleased with itself, and not for the first time, Yamamoto wonders if it has a sense of humor. He’d never heard anything like that before, but then again, one of the cardinal rules of the profession is that there are some things best learnt on the job. (Nothing like the good practical experience of running for your life to put the fear of God into a man, after all.)

He’s not quite sure what to say, so he opts for the obvious question.

“So... what are you doing here?”

“You told me to go away.” The nightstalker tilts its head to one side; a gesture Yamamoto interprets as playfulness. “You never said I shouldn’t come back.”

Embarrassed by the memory of that little incident, Yamamoto can’t stop himself from blurting out, “You heard me?”

The corners of the nightstalker’s lips curl up and back, in the strangely familiar, too-sharp smile. “ _Everything_ heard you.” Yamamoto’s chagrin at hearing this appears to amuse it even more, although it doesn’t do anything as gauche as laughing out loud.

As he looks at it, with frost threaded through its black hair and those frightening, unblinking red eyes, a thought strikes Yamamoto. Something he wants to ask, though he’s not quite sure how to approach the matter. Eventually, he settles for the blunt approach.

“That calf, from back then... did you, um... eat that?”

The nightstalker blinks once—very, very slowly, and with the air of doing it for dramatic effect rather than out of necessity—before it answers.

“Younglings. Wildlings.” It snorts dismissively, glancing back over its shoulder to let that lamp-like gaze wander across the distant forest. “This one does not feed upon the lesser creatures.”

Sounding braver than he feels, Yamamoto attempts a grin as he says, “Am _I_ a lesser creature?”

The nightstalker’s gaze flickers, momentarily. It does not answer, and there is, Yamamoto notices, a distinctly hungry look in its eyes. This is unsettling enough that it breaks the spell that seems to have been cast over Yamamoto; all at once, he remembers who he is, what it is that he’s talking to, and just how absurd it is for him to be speaking, quite civilly, through an open doorway with the bloodsucking fiend that would probably like nothing better than to have him for supper.

Yamamoto swallows, hard, around the lump that has suddenly formed in his throat.

“Well,” he says, trying very hard to keep his voice level. “If you’ll excuse me, I must turn in for the night.”

The nightstalker does not reply. Yamamoto shuts the door on him—not rudely, but quite firmly. He hears no footsteps retreating from the porch to head back into the storm, but when he glances out the window shortly afterwards, there is no trace of the nightstalker to be seen.

*

Miraculously, morning brings the return of the sun from its long absence, stilling the howl of the wind and delivering some respite. The view outside the house is peaceful; blanketed in snow, freshly-fallen and pristine, and Yamamoto seizes his chance. Several hours are whiled away performing a proper repair on last night’s broken window, and by the time the putty holding the new glass in place has set, the sun is once again drawing low over the hills.

It’s a pity, he thinks, watching daylight flee across the snow, far too swiftly; he barely had time to enjoy it before it was gone again.

As the last rays of sun are swept away on the breeze, and darkness falls over the cottage, he settles down at the table for his evening meal: stew, hard biscuits, strips of jerky. He’s just getting started when he hears a strange, insistent tapping at the window sill.

At first he imagines that it must be a freak breeze, or perhaps a woodpecker, starving in the winter snow. But then he spots the shadow of something moving outside, coming to rest with its feet just barely visible through the gap underneath the front door.

The nightstalker has returned. His throat having suddenly gone dry, Yamamoto swallows with difficulty. At the same time he struggles to ignore the weird little pleasurable flip his stomach does, because he has far more sense than that. After all, only a madman would be excited at the prospect of conversation with a monster.

“Are you trying to scare me?”

He isn't sure that his voice is loud enough to carry all the way across the room and be audible in the chill outside, yet the nightstalker seems to hear him just fine. When it replies, its voice is shockingly clear, as though it's standing in the room with him. (He can almost feel its eyes on the back of his neck, and has to suppress another traitorous little thrill of excitement.)

“Are you so easily scared?” There isn’t much expression in its voice, but once again, Yamamoto gets the strangest sense that it’s being playful.

“No.” This isn’t quite a lie. More than ever now, he’s come to believe that there’s truth in the old ways; after all, without the protection of these four walls, they likely wouldn’t be having such a pleasant conversation. But, if the circumstances were different...

The nightstalker does not reply to this; whether this silence is sarcastic, or mere acknowledgment of a fact, isn’t clear. Yamamoto watches the waiting feet through the crack under the door for a minute more, but soon decides that if nothing is going to happen, he may as well eat.

He’s cleaned out his bowl of stew by the time the creature speaks again, and, having nearly forgotten that it was there, jumps at the sound of its voice, too close for comfort.

“Why do you stay?”

Though the creature can’t see him—or at least, so he assumes—Yamamoto raises his eyebrows. An interestingly philosophical question, coming from predator to prey. (Although now that he thinks about it, speaking as a hunter, that relationship could go both ways...)

At any rate, he makes sure to swallow before he answers; his father had always chastised him for speaking with his mouth full.

“You, of all people, should know the answer to that.”

It feels strange, addressing such a creature under the umbrella of ‘people’, but in the moment it seems appropriate, and the nightstalker lets it pass without comment.

“Yes,” it says, instead. “This one knows why the one before you stayed, and the one before him, too. But why do _you_ stay?”

Yamamoto’s gut gives an unpleasant lurch.

When he next speaks, he barely even recognizes his own voice; it’s strange and distant, the sound of it struggling to pierce through the fog that has suddenly enveloped his mind. “You knew my father...?” And then, as a most horrible thought occurs to him, one so sickening he hardly dares to hold it in his mind for more than a moment, he blurts out, “Were you the one who—?”

“I was not.”

The nightstalker’s reply is straight to the point, and upon hearing it, disappointment and relief wash over Yamamoto, in equal measures. As though trying to steady himself, he grips the edge of the table very tightly, until his knuckles turn white. His supper is all but forgotten.

“Do you know... _how_... it happened...?”

For a while, there is nothing but silence. Though not quite; the pounding of his heart is incredibly loud, making his eardrums throb. (He imagines it must be just as loud to the nightstalker, and has to resist the insane urge to laugh.)

Then, delicately, almost as though it expects Yamamoto to find its words distasteful, the nightstalker speaks.

“All humans make mistakes. And that one... was only human.”

As if on cue, beyond the threshold of the door, the wind picks up again, whistling fiercely through the distant trees and through the cracks in the walls. The shadow of feet he can see under the door, however, do not budge in the slightest.

“—Oh.”

That is all Yamamoto says, for he can’t think of anything else. There’s an awful churning in his stomach, as of nausea; he wonders if the nightstalker would be offended if he threw up where he sat. And perhaps he would have remained there for hours or even days, mind completely blank and vaguely queasy, if not for the nightstalker interrupting his troubled thoughts.

“I answered your question,” it says, sounding almost annoyed. “Now you answer mine.”

“O—oh. Right, sorry.” And Yamamoto knows it’s quite right to insist; even if the question was asked without thinking, the nightstalker gave him an answer, and now, he owes it... for whatever _that’s_ worth. “Um...” He leans back in his chair, frowning slightly as he tries to clear his mind, to think of anything but his father. The remains of his meal have gone cold, but it hardly matters; he’s lost his appetite completely. “I don’t... really know, I guess.” He scratches his chin, fumbling around for words that will make for a good answer. “I just... didn’t want to leave?”

He thinks he’s getting better at reading the nightstalker’s silences, and this time, it seems distinctly unimpressed. Not that he _needs_ to impress it, of course; he doesn’t have to justify himself to a damn creature of the night.

And yet, that’s exactly what he finds himself trying to do. He clears his throat, lighting upon an idea and seizing it in a hurry. “I mean—it’s my duty, isn’t it? I’ve got an obligation, don’t I? To all the people living down in the valley.” That has the right kind of sound to it. Encouraged by his own reasoning, he adds, “If I don’t do this, who will?”

“Obligation,” the nightstalker echoes him; sounding it out slowly, as though the word feels strange in its mouth.

“That’s right.”

To this, the nightstalker merely says, “—I see.”

And Yamamoto doesn’t hear a sound after this, not so much as a whisper, but all of a sudden he _knows_ , with absolute certainty, that the nightstalker is gone. A vague sense of abandonment washes over him, tempered somewhat by the thought that he should be _glad_ for this, he ought to be relieved; nothing good could possibly come of carrying on like this with a nightstalker, his sworn enemy.

Still, he can’t help himself—after clearing away his dishes and discarding what’s left of his supper, he goes to the door, meticulously undoing the locks and bolts until finally he can open it and look outside.

There’s nothing, as he’d expected. He is alone once again.

*

So the days pass, each following an identical routine until they begin to blend into one another. By day, when the weather permits it, he hunts, or else performs upkeep on the cottage; patching a hole in the fence, perhaps, or clearing the debris from last night’s storm from the yard. On bad days, he remains locked inside the cottage, sitting beneath a blanket near the hearth and staring into the flames, simply waiting for time to pass.

Then in the evenings, he prepares his supper, consumes it, washes up and goes to bed, only to wake the next morning and start the cycle anew.

Once again, the nightstalker has disappeared without a trace, leaving Yamamoto with no company except his own thoughts. And for a time, he is disturbed by this; the sudden isolation all the more piercing for how recently it was broken. The memory of holding an actual conversation, of interacting with another sentient creature, is still fresh in his mind, and he misses it so intensely sometimes that it threatens to make him dizzy.

Yet as time goes by, the days growing ever shorter and colder, like an animal which buries itself beneath the snow to sleep Yamamoto sinks deeper into himself, numbing himself to the desolation of the long winter. Soon, in the absence of any material evidence pointing to its happening, he can almost convince himself he had imagined the whole thing—the nightstalker and all his interactions with it become as a dream, a fleeting illusion which vanishes upon waking.

And if, every once in a while, he feels a prickling on the back of his neck like he’s being watched—what of it?  He can’t live like this forever, watching and waiting and wanting and hardly even knowing what it is he wants and what he's waiting for. So he pushes the feeling to the back of his mind; smothers it the best he can, and presses on through each wearisome day like it would kill him to stop.

One day, deep into his long, lonely vigil, he catches a glimpse of his reflection one morning, and notices he is growing the beginnings of a rather magnificent beard. He's never been a fan of the look—it was just something that happened accidentally while he was waiting for time to pass. It’s been some time since he shaved, obviously, but it doesn’t take long for him to locate the razor and some soap he can use for shaving cream.

The weather is good enough that he can stand outside shirtless in the cold, peering into a shard of mirror glass he’s propped up on a fence post. It’s a hell of a thing to be alone inside your own head, he thinks to himself, carefully scraping away the overgrowth of whiskers along his jawline. Your thoughts become strange and unpredictable; they go in directions they never would have, living in civil society. Some days, he starts to feel as though he doesn’t even know himself. (Or, perhaps more accurately, he’s seeing himself now in the absence of any external influences—what one might call his _true self_ —and he sees something in it to be feared.)

Over his shoulder in the glass reflection, he can see dark shapes shifting back and forth between the distant trees, even though it’s broad daylight. Right now, in the heart of winter, he knows that the nightstalkers have grown bolder, stronger. Soon, they might dare to begin approaching the little cottage he calls home before dark—or even the village nestled in the valley below.

A shudder runs through him at this thought, and his hand slips slightly. He nicks himself on the chin with the razor, drawing blood.

Almost immediately, as though they can scent his blood on the air, the movements of the _things_ in the forest grow more frantic, almost violent. From his distant vantage point, Yamamoto watches them for a while, dispassionate. Eventually, he fetches a damp rag, rinsing his face off before wringing it out into the snow. The stain it leaves behind is pink with his blood, but he pays it no mind. He’s read the signs; he knows the day has come where he must do the job of his forefathers, or perish in the attempt. That duty he waxed so poetic about to the nightstalker has arrived, and there’s no running from it—sooner or later, they’ll come.

It takes a day for him to gather all the things he’ll need: the axe, the stake, torches and the flint... Some of these he has to rescue from the shed, where they’ve lain untouched for nearly a season; others he finds inside the cottage, covered in a fine layer of dust. He spends the better part of a morning sharpening the axe at the whetstone, until the edge whistles dangerously when he swings it through the air.

A sharp edge isn’t all that’s needed, though, or hunters would have outlived their usefulness long ago. When twilight arrives; when the chill of night is just gaining its teeth, he lays the axe down in the center of the yard, and then stands before it, eyes closed. Unable to rely on his sight, his other senses seem magnified. He feels every miniscule shift in the breeze; hears the flutter of wings and the threatening snap of twigs in the woods; smells ice and cold, fresh earth. And when he breathes in, cold air spirals down his throat into his lungs, chilling him to the bone.

In the old days, they said to always work in pairs—but this time, his only partner will be his axe. (All the more important, then, that he gets this right.)

With eyes shut, hand resting over his heart, Yamamoto concentrates. In his head he can hear his father’s voice, gently reminding him—you can’t just _say_ the words, you have to _feel_ them. So: he digs deep, deeper than he ever has in his life, thrusting aside his weakness and uncovering feelings long-buried, feelings he’d tried to forget.

He recalls an image of Tsuyoshi, lying in the snow—how small and fragile he looked, in death; his skin so bloodless that it seemed to be part of the ice around him—focuses on it, till the fire burning in him grows so strong it threatens to consume him. Then, and only then, does he speak the old words of blessing—wielding their power like a weapon to consecrate his axe, that it might keep him safe.

When the last echoes of his voice have died away, he opens his eyes. Twilight has traded places with night, and there is darkness all around him. The axe lies on the ground looking quite as normal as before, apart from a slight glow that, in any other light, he might have mistaken for a reflection.

But when he picks it up, the haft is warm under his palm like a living thing, and he knows that the ritual has worked.

The risen moon overhead floods the fields of snow with a shimmering glow, lighting the way forward. It’s a clear night; an omen of good things.

There’s nothing left to do but hunt.

Snow crunching underfoot, he makes the trek up towards the edge of the forest unmolested. The moment he crosses over into the boundary of the forest, however, he feels it—from places unseen, he is being watched. For the time being, he only senses a general confusion. It’s the way a pack of wolves might treat the lamb that has blundered into their midst; soon, their hunger will overcome their curiosity...

But then again, he’s no mere prey.

For the first hour or so, the pickings are slim. Finally he stumbles across one youngling skulking around a copse of trees, its mouth already stained with the life-blood of some unfortunate animal. They regard each other for a moment across the clearing, still and calculating—but younglings are not renowned for their patience, and momentarily it leaps, snarling fiercely.

This poorly-thought-out attempt is met with an axe blade directly to the face, splitting it clean in half. Meanwhile, as it’s rolling around injured in the snow, hissing and growling wordlessly, Yamamoto prepares the torch, striking the flint to set it aflame.

The sudden explosion of light and warmth gives the creature pause, but by then it’s too late. It screams as it’s consumed by the blaze, all too quickly, and soon all that’s left is a scattering of bone fragments and glowing ash.

Unceremoniously, Yamamoto kicks snow over its remains, and then turns his head sharply as a bone-chilling howl is taken up across the woods. This one’s dying screams have alerted others, and they will surely turn out in greater numbers.

Just how he wants it. He's never been sure until this moment, but standing there in the clearing with axe and torch in hand and that terrifying wail echoing all around him, he finds himself grinning madly, elated with the thrill of the hunt—perhaps this is what he was made to do.

*

Many hours and several kills later, Yamamoto finds himself starting to flag, slightly. It’s not that he’s badly injured—a swipe here, a rake of claws there—barely enough to draw blood and certainly not enough to discourage him. But unlike his prey, he's still warm-blooded, and the biting cold is beginning to wear him down.

He had thought to ignore this, but it becomes a very immediate problem when next he encounters a pair of nightstalkers, neither of them prideful enough to refuse to work as a team for their survival. It’s monumentally difficult to keep both of them in his line of sight; he fends off blows from all sides, wheeling this way and that in a frenzied dance through the snow. Just as he manages to drive a stake through one’s arm to pin it to a tree, the other takes advantage of his lapse in attention to land a bone-jarringly solid blow to the back of his head, dazing him momentarily.

With his ears ringing, Yamamoto whirls blindly, swinging the axe as he goes. It’s a lucky hit, decapitating the stalker with one blow; its head lands in the snow near its grotesquely twitching body,  and the flames make short work of both.

Meanwhile, the one staked to the tree is hissing and snarling, wrenching its body from side to side to try and free itself, but to no avail. Without a shred of emotion, Yamamoto dismembers it. He steps over a still-twitching arm as he fetches the torch, and doesn’t even blink as the flames leap up before his eyes.

But, as he presides over the monster’s dying screams, Yamamoto comes to realize he’s panting, breathing much harder than before. Weariness is setting in; perhaps he should have called it a night long before this. Resolute, he turns, meaning to keep going, but the world careens around him, throwing him to the ground.

His knees feel weak, and the place where the creature struck him is throbbing. Gingerly, he reaches up and touches the back of his head. His fingers come away bloody. With the adrenaline of battle already drained out of him, the pain is sharp, washing over him in sickening waves.

Just then, he hears a faint rustling in front of him as something approaches through the underbrush. The worst possible timing, he thinks—but perhaps it was bound to happen. With blood all over his hands, streaming down the back of his neck, Yamamoto looks up into a pair of glowing red eyes. And he smiles.

“You’re too late,” he murmurs. Darkness is closing in. “They already got me.”

He doesn’t remember hitting the ground.

*

For a time after that, there is nothing. Actually, a correction: there is _something_ , but nothing recognizable to him in his current state, half-delirious from pain and loss of blood. Certainly, it seems to be nothing more than a dream, because for some reason he feels as though he is flying, as if the ground below him is falling away at great speed. Perhaps this is what death feels like, he reasons; perhaps Tsuyoshi’s last moments were like this, too. If so, that’s a comfort, for there isn’t so much pain as there is _cold_ —everywhere, surrounding him, all-encompassing.

He’d never imagined he would spend his last moments trapped in some kind of psychedelic delusion, but—he supposes—it’s still better than being eaten alive.

His slowly meandering thoughts have just arrived at the question of the afterlife and whether he’s reached it when the world comes to an abrupt halt and he finds himself thrown roughly, face-down, upon the ground. The impact of this gives him such a shock to the system that he realizes he is not, in fact, dead yet.

Before he can make sense of this, a scream pierces the night. Not a scream of some dying creature, though—a very _human_ scream.

“My god—what is _that_?!”

“Is he alive?”

“Help him, he’s bleeding!”

It takes a terrible effort, more than he could have ever thought possible, but he manages to open his eyes. A strange man’s face swims into view, illuminated by flickering lamplight.

“Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Focusing on the man’s face—a _kind_ face, lined with concern—Yamamoto nods, faintly. He tries to speak, but his voice is nowhere to be found. The man exchanges a troubled glance with the companion standing next to him.

“He’s lucid, but barely. Hurry—you get his legs, I’ll lift from over here. One, two...”

Once again, the world swims around Yamamoto, but this time he is being lifted by warm, human hands. It’s a comforting thought. Lulled by the swaying back and forth as he’s carried away, he bids farewell to consciousness once more—but this time, without fear. For the time-being, he is safe.

*

Two entire days pass before Yamamoto is back on his feet—he would’ve liked to be up much sooner, but at the insistence of the village physician, he’d remained bedridden to “focus on healing”.

In the meantime, he fields a few bedside visitors: the men who had found him lying in the street, and the worried innkeep who put him up while they were fetching the physician. Last but not least, the village mayor himself, who seems to have grown so old and wizened in the year since Yamamoto last saw him that he’s surprised the old man is still up and about.

It’s a good thing the old man doesn’t ask him to explain, because Yamamoto isn’t sure where he could even start. Instead, they merely look at each other in silence, the old man’s eyes searching Yamamoto’s face as though there might be clues there, but finding none.

Eventually, he’s the one to break the silence.

“You won’t tell me what you got up to that night to get that hurt, will you, boy?”

Yamamoto only smiles. At this, the old man snorts, but it’s an affectionate sound.

“So be it, then,” he says, gruffly. “Your father was the same way—wouldn’t speak of what he did, under pain of death. Perhaps that’s for the best.”

Leaning heavily upon his walking stick, he gets to his feet, and then looks back at Yamamoto.

“You best stay safe up there... whatever it is that you’re doing.”

“Don’t you worry about that, sir.”

The old man scoffs again, softly, but this time he’s looking towards the window, from which the silhouettes of snow-capped mountains are distantly visible. He gazes upon them for a while, apparently lost in thought, and only seems to come back to himself when Yamamoto shifts uncomfortably, making the bed he’s resting upon squeak.

“Time,” he says, suddenly, “moves on. And people forget the old ways.”

Yamamoto meets his gaze—piercing, from beneath wrinkled brow.

“But not all of us,” he says, quietly.

“No,” the old man agrees. “Not all of us.”

Seemingly satisfied with this final exchange, he nods, and takes his leave of Yamamoto, shutting the door gently behind him.

*

The village physician would have had him stay in bed for another week at least, but by the fifth day Yamamoto has run out of patience. Honestly, he feels fine—never felt better. He feels... like a new man. Yamamoto leaves the village and never looks back, and every breath he takes on the long trek back up the mountainside, expelled into frost that dangles in mid-air around his face, reminds him that he’s alive.

When he finally reaches the fence that draws the boundary around his cottage, he notices something strange and silvery lying in the yard. It’s his axe, rescued from somewhere in the woods, its head driven into the frozen ground. And for a moment he wonders how it got there; he’d thought it lost forever, abandoned wherever it lay in the snow.

(But then again, he doesn’t really have to wonder, does he?)

He walks over; reaches down to wrench the axe up out of the ground, weighing it in his palm. When he goes inside, he sets it up to rest just inside the door, easily within reach.

It feels right to have it there.

The very first night he is back, the nightstalker also returns. Yamamoto is just going about his business when he _senses_ it—a presence at the door, waiting and watchful. This time, he’s not surprised; in fact, he comes right up to the other side of the door, and places his hand upon the knob. After a moment’s hesitation, he gives it a twist, and the door swings open.

Once again, the first thing he sees are those glowing red eyes. He smiles a little, and decides to start with the obvious.

“You saved me,” he says.

The nightstalker’s face remains blank. Well, it had never seemed like the type to suffer idiots, but that also necessitates trying a different tack.

“You could’ve done anything you wanted,” Yamamoto says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully. “So why didn’t you eat me?”

This, the nightstalker deigns to answer, haughtily.

“Dying blood holds no attraction for me. This one only feeds upon the blood of the living.”

“Is that why you saved me?”

A long silence follows. As he watches, the nightstalker’s brow creases, in consternation. And then—laboriously, as though it’s trying to figure something out, it says, “Because... it is more interesting, this way.”

_Interesting_ is one word for it, Yamamoto thinks. For he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t aware of the debt he owes now—and the nightstalker must be, too, or else it wouldn’t have come. A blood debt; the most severe kind there is.

(This, too, is one of the old ways.)

 “Well?” says Yamamoto, voice infused with false cheer. “Don’t leave me hanging.” And then, as though it needs reminding, “You know how this works, right?”

“Let me in.”

This time, there’s no hesitation. The nightstalker’s voice is underlaid with a low growl, giving it a frighteningly bestial quality. Yamamoto had almost been expecting this, but he still barks out a laugh, shrill with nervousness. He knows that, if he does this, it’ll probably be the last thing he does.

Yet he owes a debt; one that’s not easily repaid.

(Life for a life—or so they say.)

He takes a deep breath.

“Come inside,” he tells the nightstalker.

Faster than the eye can see, too fast for him to react, the monster leaps, taking him to the ground and knocking all the air out of him. He doesn’t even have time to scream; an image of sharp fangs piercing his throat flashes before his eyes—

And then, just as quickly as it had come, the monster has released him. Instead, it’s prowling around the confines of the cottage, picking up things and looking at them, as curious as a cat.

Rubbing his chest as he sits up, trying to catch his breath, Yamamoto stares at the nightstalker, who is currently peering with great interest into the pot that Yamamoto had used to stew his supper.

“Aren’t you going to...?” he asks, uncertainly.

“Later.” Its voice cuts through the air. “I must look at these things first. They are very interesting.”

“Oh... Later.” Yamamoto swallows. “I... see.”

It was one thing to say the words on a whim, staring down the nightstalker and knowing that the end would be swift; it’s quite another to have it walking around in his house and saving him as a snack for later. Meanwhile, the nightstalker has made a full circle of the room and returned to the door, where his axe rests. It leans down to study it, but does not comment; the axe head glows a little as it draws near, and it falls back again, deciding it’s not _that_ curious.

Then it turns those glowing eyes on Yamamoto.

“Now,” it says.

“Now?”

“ _Now._ ”

There’s no time to get comfortable; no time to even protest. The nightstalker moves so quickly it’s not even a blur; it’s just there one moment and gone the next, and by the time Yamamoto realizes it has moved, it’s already bearing down on top of him. He gasps at the exquisite pain of fangs piercing his throat; at the throbbing of blood spilling from the puncture wounds, going limp as the nightstalker drinks hungrily. He doesn’t even have the strength to push it away. All he can do is reach up, grasping at the nightstalker’s shoulders, growing weaker by the moment as his life blood is drained away.

But just as everything is going dark; just as the world is starting to fade, the nightstalker... stops. It licks the wounds clean, and distantly, through a haze of half-pleasurable pain, Yamamoto can feel the flesh of his throat starting to knit back together.

“What...?” he says, faintly, once the wound has healed enough for him to speak. Most traces of blood are gone; he’s dimly aware that he’s lying spread-eagled on the floor, but still very much alive. Meanwhile, the nightstalker is seated nearby, gaze lazy and half-lidded, looking quite satisfied with itself.

“Did you think I would kill you?” it asks, sounding amused.

With great effort, Yamamoto attempts a shrug.

“I had a notion,” he admits.

The nightstalker scoffs.

“Then I would not be able to enjoy you later,” it points out, matter-of-factly.

At those words, a shudder runs through Yamamoto, and he’s too feeble from blood loss to argue the point. He has just enough energy to stagger to his feet and make his way to bed, whereupon he collapses, asleep before his head even hits the pillow.

*

When he wakes in the morning, the nightstalker is still there—seated by the window with its back to Yamamoto, lightly silhouetted in the pale sun of morning.

Yamamoto watches it for a while, studying the play of light through its dark hair; the way that it hugs its legs to its chest, like a child.

He feels like he could cry.

Instead he says, hoarsely, “Good morning, sunshine!”

The nightstalker casts a haughty look over its shoulder.

“Do not,” it says, “call me that.”

“Haha, okay.” Yamamoto smiles down at his hands—calloused and scarred, like an old man’s; traces his life-line absently, with a fingertip. “Then what should I call you?”

“This one has no need for names.”

Yamamoto looks up again. The nightstalker is watching him now, its expression opaque, but Yamamoto could almost imagine he was being teased by that little flash of fang. Without thinking, Yamamoto reaches up to run his fingers over the puncture wounds in his throat from the night before, already scabbed over, and grins.

“But this one does, so I guess you’re just going to have to tell me, huh?”

For a while, the nightstalker studies him in silence. It's impossible to tell what it's thinking; its eyes are dark and unreadable, and its face is frozen without emotion. Or it _should_ be impossible—but for some reason, Yamamoto feels like he understands it. In some strange, twisted way, they feel almost like kindred spirits.

When the nightstalker finally speaks, it proceeds haltingly, as though trying to remember something from a very long time ago.

“Once... this one was known as Hibari.”

_Hibari_. Something about that name feels right to Yamamoto; his lips form around the shape of it, soundlessly, before he says, “Nice to meet you, Hibari. I'm Yamamoto. Yamamoto Takeshi. But I guess you can call me whatever you want, huh?”

Again, as though trying to recall with difficulty the correct procedure for the occasion from the recesses of his mind, the nightstalker— _Hibari_ —speaks.

“I will do that.”

At this, Yamamoto smiles so hard his cheeks start to hurt.

In the old days, they always said to work in pairs...

And maybe this isn’t _quite_ what they meant, but it’s how things stand now. A nightstalker in his house; an axe by the door. He rests his head on his knees, and with eyes closed, lets out a slow, shaky breath.

He's home.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> In some ways I think that this might be a love-letter to 8018, the pairing.
> 
> Young man meets a monster; young man goes on journey to find himself or else prove himself to monster; having domesticated the monster, young man finds that it is actually quite cute... or something along those lines.
> 
> I didn't set out to write a story that had no other characters in it, but that's how it worked out. Writing Yamamoto without the presence of his friends is a weird experience, but having friends around would have changed the nature of the struggle that he was going through, so I think it had to be this way. (Sorry, Yamamoto!)
> 
> Please do leave kudos or comments if you're inclined to. They're always appreciated!


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